


Blood Money

by Tarlan



Category: Le sang du chasseur | Blood of the Hunter (1995)
Genre: Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-26
Updated: 2006-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:59:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Philip had not succumbed to his mental illness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Money

The man pulled his coat collar closer around his ears as he trudged through the knee deep snow. Yesterday at dusk he had come across the camp of Postmaster Therault, accepting the man's hospitality warmly even though he had intended the other harm. Therault had a letter in his charge, a letter addressed to Yan Thoreau which would bring his half-brother to Porcupine City to claim the inheritance that should have been Philip's, and Philip had no intention of allowing that letter to reach Thoreau.

As far as Philip was concerned he had earned that inheritance with every blow of fist and with every derogatory remark aimed at breaking him -- mind and body -- since he was a babe-in-arms. Three days ago he had found the strength to stand up to his abusive father and he had made him realize that he was no longer the frightened child who would cower whenever Charles Thornton raised his fist or voice.

Philip had paid for his insubordination with disinheritance, but that had not truly surprised him as one of his father's favorite games had been to tell him how worthless he was by comparing him unfavorably to his half-brother. Often Charles Thornton would swear to changing his Will, giving all of his estate to his first son, Yan Thoreau, born of the woman Charles had loved but had been forced by society to give up for fear of being outcast as a bigamist.

Philip thought of his mother and how she must have suffered during the scandal, becoming a tragic figure who continued to show respect to her husband in polite society, but who had come to loathe him behind closed doors.

He laughed softly and without humor, recalling the Caribou dance from several years back. He had gone there in a fit of rage, intending to kill the half-brother whose very existence caused so much anguish for him -- and for his mother, while she lived. His rage had increased when he saw the welcome afforded his half-brother as they begged Yan to play his fiddle, and he had crept closer in order to gain a better vantage shot. Instead, his hand had been stayed by the beauty of Marie Cummins dancing with her new husband -- John Cummins.

She looked so much like the portraits of his mother in her youth, with her dark honey-blond hair and her bright, sparkling blue eyes. All at once Philip could imagine how beautiful -- and how alive -- his mother must have looked as she danced and twirled, silently wondering how many hearts she had captured, only to be given in marriage to a man who held no love for her.

It had been a society wedding; a marriage of convenience to unite two powerful families, and she had suffered like a beautiful bird trapped in a gilded cage.

Philip had stayed on at the dance, captivated by Marie's lithe beauty, and eventually he had sat by a fireside sharing it with Metis trappers who were too drunk to notice the outsider among them. They had talked and he had listened first in disbelief, and then in malicious satisfaction.

Yan Thoreau had been force fed a web of lies by his mother's family. To Yan's knowledge, his mother had been but a child on the cusp of womanhood when Charles Thornton abducted her from the Cree. According to them, Thornton had forced her to become his concubine, and had then abused and raped her. However, in their tale she had managed to escape the white man's evil clutches and had crossed the wilderness alone, returning to her tribe, only to bear Thornton's child. She had died before Yan's eighth year, brought down by a white man's disease that had decimated the tribes, leaving Yan with only faint recollection of her.

In truth, Philip knew that his father had loved the Cree squaw with a passion reserved for no other, not believing that he would have any trouble from his squaw as it was commonplace for some Cree to take more than one wife. However, when he brought her back to the city, intent on letting his little squaw usurp Philip's mother in their marriage bed, his little squaw had turned away from him in sorrow. She had not known of his white wife but she had known of the white man's law of monogamy. Her Cree marriage to Thornton would never be accepted in their eyes while his white wife still lived and so she had packed her belongings and left, unable to endure life in the city as an outcast.

Philip had read all of his father's letters proclaiming his love for the squaw even though she had died within a few months of his birth. His father had loved to flaunt those letters, throwing them in his face as a way to punctuate his contempt for his white wife's child, and blaming Philip for the death of both women.

In truth, his father had been the monster, and the true cause of both women's deaths. Philip's mother had denied his father all conjugal rights after he brought home the squaw. Not that Charles Thornton had cared at that point as he had not wanted her, being still enamored by his little squaw. As the years past, so did his anger grow until, one night after drinking more than usual, he forced his way into her bedroom -- and raped her.

Only no one would call an act of sex between husband and wife _rape_ , so she suffered in silence, making several attempts to destroy the life growing in her womb.

As if taking revenge for the attempts on his unborn life, Philip killed his mother in childbirth but Charles Thornton did not mourn his wife's death or take any pleasure in his new son. Instead, he saw it as an opportunity to regain the squaw he had loved and lost, journeying to her village despite the fever that gripped the city -- and him; the same fever that swept through the Cree and Metis, and killing Yan's mother before Thornton could reclaim her.

So his father had returned empty-handed, and yet filled with grief and rage that he unleashed against his legitimate son for the next twenty-two years of Philip's life.

His father was dead -- murdered -- and Philip knew how it would look to those who learned of his disinheritance only days before the shooting. As much as Philip wished it *had* been him who pulled the trigger, he did not wish to be hanged for a crime he had not committed, knowing the contents of that letter might mistakenly place the hangman's noose around his neck.

Anyway, the inheritance **should** have been his and not Yan's. He was the one who had spent years studying the business and working for a pittance in his father's saw mills. He had no money of his own, and he had no clothes but the ones on his back, except for those bought for special functions where his father would take him along only to belittle him in front of his so-called peers. Other than that, his father had given him nothing except the basic necessities, not even allowing him to share his table at mealtimes. Instead, Philip's room had been in the attic alongside the servants, and he ate his meals with them, earning either their pity or their contempt, though he knew not which was worse.

So what had stayed his hand this time? Why had he not killed Therault and taken the letter from him as he had planned?

Perhaps it was because Therault had been the first person to treat him kindly in many years; offering him the warmth of his fire and a share of the rabbit he had snared. Philip had intended to kill the man as he slept but when he awoke during the night he found an extra blanket had been placed over him, and looking across the small fire he saw Therault sleeping without one, wrapped only in his heavy fur coat.

How could he repay such compassion -- such kindness -- with murder?

Or perhaps it came down to a single statement of fact...

"I'm not a killer," he whispered.

He had spent the rest of the night staring into the fire. This man had few worldly possessions, with little money to call his own, and yet he seemed far richer than even Philip's father. Therault lived frugally and yet well, and from the stories he told around the campfire last night, he was content with his life -- and he was loved.

Philip considered the letter that was still in Therault's possession. He thought about what it represented; the overworked, unhappy people working in the saw mills who had considered him a handy target for their anger and despair. Then he thought about his mother and how she had shackled herself to a life of misery because of this financial wealth, which eventually led her to an early grave.

Some how, this money seemed tainted with the blood of others, offering little in compensation for their hard work and sacrifice. Did he truly deserve this inheritance any more than the workers in the saw mills -- or any more than Yan?

Strangely, when Philip explained who he was, Therault accepted his word without question, offering instead to let him ride on the dog sled all warmly wrapped in furs.

"Yan Thoreau is a good man. You can trust his word," he had said just before ordering the dogs onward.

Now, as they approached the small holding that Yan must have built with his own hands, Philip looked to the man walking beside him holding the letter that he had considered killing over.

The familiar figure of his half-brother stepped out of the house, and behind him stood Marie; beautiful Marie who had become Yan's wife after her husband died of the fever a year back. Philip forced aside the years of hatred he had built for a man he had never met, and he stepped forward.

"My name is Philip Thornton... and I am your half-brother."

THE END


End file.
